


Heard it through the ghost line

by Noscere



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU: XCOM lost the resistance, Bad Ending, Gen, Halloween, ghost - Freeform, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 08:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: XCOM lost. Everyone who served aboard the Avenger is dead. Some say that the crew might still have some unfinished business.Except for XCOM's defeat, that is of course just a rumor.





	Heard it through the ghost line

The last of the traitors have fallen. XCOM is gone. Long live humanity. And long live the Elders. 

* * *

 

ADVENT disassembles the Avenger, parade her guts and gore around, as if to prove that with the bones of the ship are the bones of the men and women who betrayed ADVENT. They never find the body of the traitors’ leader, Central Officer Bradford.

( _but whispers, whispers of cigarette smoke and rotgut permeate the parades and they say if you listen, you can hear the pained cry of, “Commander!”_ )

The ADVENT Speaker declares a holiday to mourn the loss of the Commander, a woman whose moon-pale face and jet-black hair kept in a neat bun is plastered over the screens in an odd vigil. They honor her for her undying service to the Elders’ cause.

She stares straight at the citizens walking down the streets of New Seattle and the slums of Reborn Paris. There’s something unnerving about her neat, placid smile, with silk that barely masks the hellfire in her burnt-black eyes. Some think she must have been lovely in life, a grace that has been destroyed by death, and that is why the resurrected corpse on the screens watches over them like some ugly specter.

XCOM is dead.

But what is dead may never truly die. 

 

* * *

 

They say a woman with bone-white skin and jet-black hair roams the halls in gene therapy clinics. Some swear that green liquid leaks from her red-booted feet, a complement from a costume out of a bad sci-fi flick, compared to the military jacket she wears and the knife strapped to her thigh.

She appears to the patients waiting to have all their ills cured, and shakes her head. She lingers until the pod closes over them, and the therapy begins.

( _Some of them never see day again._ )

The ones who come out of the pod claim they hear fists banging on the walls, begging for them to reconsider. They say that they hear warnings that the gene therapy will not cure them forever, that the people who are lost in the clinics are dead for good, and that ADVENT is not the benevolent savior they portray themselves to be. They say that they see flashes of the faces underneath the Troopers’ masks, and those faces are not quite human.

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

There’s a specter haunting the finest of ADVENT’s labs, or so the nerve-wracked students fresh from university say. Of course, who can trust them, when they're so eager to please and so afraid that they will lose their vaunted positions in the most competitive labs? A good course of sleep and food other than ADVENT burgers would clear most of their heads.

( _and for those who are not swayed, there are always the aliens with overlarge eyes and skin stretched taut over bone)_

The scientist stares at his brethren. He’s an omen of bad luck, portending glassware that shatters and autoclaves that explode. Students joke that he – of the white ADVENT coat and black-rimmed glasses, with a shiny pate as white as a skull, though some of the senior scientists remark how he must look very familiar to a departed colleague – runs around the labs swatting beakers onto the floor like a ghostly cat.

Those are some of the better events he foretells. 

A part of science is the ability to replicate: trials are done over and over again, tested so that the effect of pure chance is diluted out. It is to be expected that some mistakes will be made.

Mistakes, however, should not feel like sabotage.

Beakers turn cloudy with some unknown bacteria, even after being blasted with hot steam and radioactive rays; scalpels slip and cut through tendons, wasting valuable time and letting samples submit to decay; blue toxic smoke billows from microscopes worth billions of dollars; hard drives and lab notebooks irreparably ruined by a slick green fluid, almost iridescent green, dense enough that a human body could float within it.

These are, of course, just hearsay.

 

* * *

 

ADVENT begins to rebuild over the ruins of Montreal, burnt to ash by Central Officer Bradford’s hand. There are rumors that there were once people who lived in the metro that threaded the city’s underbelly, who were chased out and killed because they clung too closely to the old ways. There are whispers that if you go walking by the polluted-brown shore, sometimes the moon-pale white of bones will rise from the St Lawrence River like belugas surfacing from the deep.

Those, of course, are just rumors.

 

* * *

ADVENT marches its forces across the globe, marathons of red and black parading down the city center streets. It’s a time for celebration: the troopers serve tirelessly, for although XCOM is defeated, the last of the dissidents must be stamped out.

They say if you look at just the right angle during the parades, you can see a woman moon-pale with eyes as black as night. Half her body is wreathed in flame, and hungry fire spits sparks through her left temple. She marches to the beat of the ADVENT Troopers’ feet, but she does not walk lock step with the proud protectors. She hangs over their shoulders, and whispers sedition into their ears.

( _There are Troopers who break free from the ranks, and are never seen again_.)

There’s a distortion on the cameras that show off the parade. Some say it’s the ghost of a Trooper with a fur-lined collar, a ghost who walks among their ranks. He shouts _ADVENT kracsad_ into the beat on the streets. The edges of his armor are blood soaked, and bandages dangle from his missing left arm.

They say he murders soldiers in cold blood, stabs them with the stub of his left arm or the blades projecting from his right. They say he’s the reason that a squad of six ADVENT troopers may go on patrol but only one will return.

And if you look to the rooftops, you’ll see his partner, her long coat whispering along her ghostly shoulders in some unseen wind as she raises her sniper rifle. They say if you listen close, you can hear the sharp _click_ but no _bang!_ as the aliens following the parade stumble and slump to the ground.

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

ADVENT curates curiosity and creation, but they are very strict about what they show. Everyone has a program tailored to their wants. Why would they ever need to flip through channels in search of something more?

They say if you change the channel on the ADVENT provided radios in the dead of the night when curfew is on, you might hear the sudden crackle of static interrupt the dulcet female tones of the newscasters. What follows are coordinates in the voice of an elderly man who must have been fluent in a tongue now banned from common parlance. Pops and cracks sound off behind him, as if he had ducked out of some battle.

The Peacekeepers are very interested in knowing who has heard the transmissions, and if their listeners harbor any seditionist loyalties. But the coordinates lead nowhere, and the transmissions seem to originate from thin air.

( _Sometimes, on stormy nights when the air crackles with lightning, they say the radio erupts with screaming and the man sobbing, “Lily! Lily, run!”_ _Black hooded shadows stalk the streets those nights, and whether they are ethereal or flesh is never clear. What is clear is that by the break of dawn, the shadows are gone, and in their wake they leave not even a footprint.)_

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

Security comes in the troops marching down the street and the ever vigilant turrets that watch from apartment roofs. But not all agree with the presence of snakes that wield guns and Sectoids that scuttle between the alleyways. 

There’s a man in full armor, dented and battered in a thousand places, wielding his massive gun that barks as it spits out nothing but air. He dashes for cover behind the lamp posts and the cars that no one can drive ( _after all, who needs to drive when the AI can do it for you_?). Grenades dangle from his belt. Blood paints his face from a chin smashed in, and they say you can smell the bloodlust that surges from him like sulfur from some unseen vent.

They say he bears no love for the aliens and the aliens alone, and cuts them down with a machete silvered like the moon that still dares show her face in skies where the stars have long since been choked by the city lights.

( _He screams a war cry, of forbidden ideas, bleeds for humanity and Earth and what must have been his last words, “Commander! Commander, hold on! I’ve got you! It won’t happen again!_ ”)

These are, of course, just rumors. 

 

* * *

 

They say there’s a ghost who roams the city, pale as the moon, hair burnt-black in a tidy bun at the nape of her neck, eyes like two coals in a skull’s face. The only hint of life around her is the crown of fire and sparks that jump around her temples. 

She walks between the corridors of apartment suites, seamlessly blending in with the living who move now that curfew has been lifted. Those who see her think she resembles the woman who stares down at them from the screens, but that cannot be, because where the woman on the screens is hard-edged and cold steel, the ghost is warm steel wrapped in silk.

She whispers kindness and sweet things into ears deafened by hate, wraps arms as warm as a hearth fire around the chests of the broken and beaten, listens to the sobs of the weary and the downtrodden. They say that if you are tired of lies and ADVENT gives you no recourse but pills and gene therapy, she will come if you whisper the names of the seditionists, and she will soothe your fears.

These are, of course, just rumors. Those found to be associating with traitors will be executed.

( _ADVENT trots out many to disappear, but they never quite catch those spirited away in the middle of the night.)_

 

* * *

 

There’s a small village in Guangdong, long since abandoned now that the ocean has risen and swallowed earth. Some say you can see misty figures still tending to the fields; that is, if you survive the insectoid monstrosities that now claim the village as home. 

( _some say that you can hear soldiers laughing and cheering each other on, as plants are pulled from the earth and clams are roasted on an open fire, and the sweet melody of a long-lost language permeates the warm ocean air_ )

The Speaker smiles and says there is nothing to worry about. Humanity wrecked the Earth, but the Elders will cleanse the world.

( _some say the monstrosities are growing larger and rising out of the oceans faster than the Elders can handle_ )

 

* * *

 

They say that if you look near the ADVENT Trooper recruitment offices, you can see the shade of a man clad in fire that wraps around his torso. Black holes mark his chest and gouge out his throat. He wears a forbidden sigil on the ghostly green of his shoulder, and right by it is the harness that carries a gun as big as his torso. He speaks of sedition and banned ideals, of humanity’s right to determine their own faith and of the price of freedom that was collected in his blood. He is steadfast in his post, declaring that he will fight eternal for the traitors, and even in undeath he is ever loyal, _vigilo confido_.

They say that he drags the willing recruits from the offices and silences them forever with a stomp of a burnt black boot.

Others say that he drags them through a glowing purple portal, a portal that spits purple lightning that burns away the recruits, for this must be why they are never heard from again.

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

 

 

They say if you have certain thoughts and opinions about the way ADVENT controls the city, the lamppost scanners and security gates are less likely to pick you out of a crowd for a random search. A wizened man may appear, a man with a head nearly bald except for the fringe that wraps around the back of his head, wearing a ragged woolen sweater in a forest green ( _although no one quite knows the color, it has been many years since anyone ventured into the woods_ ), and an ID tag clipping in and out of the black ooze on his left thigh. He smiles, if a bit sad and wistfully, at the young children who tug on their parents’ hands and stare at him wide-eyed. The smell of burnt rubber and lead solder accompany the apparition, but there is a faint floral scent as if laid in offering to appease his spirit.

He walks the halls of the engineering departments that ADVENT has built, and where there was a kind smile now lies cold disdain for the works of those within the walls. Computers crash after his visits. Wrenches go missing, only to turn up in the trash. Rings made of wrought iron appear laid over blue prints: those who throw them away find their creations failing and cracking under their own weight.

( _The people who remember the old days say it’s a Canadian engineer tradition. Rings made of wrought iron, in memory of a bridge that failed and sent innocents tumbling to their deaths. It was a reminder of the burden they bore and swore to uphold. But why would an old man know of those traditions? Why not the woman on the screens, moon-pale with burnt-black hair, who had the north in her veins? Unless the two knew each other, but that cannot be right, when ADVENT celebrates the woman’s life and the man has faded into obscurity._ )

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

 

Tragedy strikes the labs. Some of the students took up the practice of leaving ADVENT burgers on their notebooks, as if to engender a treaty with the spirit that haunts their workbenches. The man with dark rimmed glasses and blood-stained lab coat comes to them in dreams, and begs them to reconsider. His hands are bloodied and so is the scalpel in his hands, as if he had just emerged from surgery – an obvious breach of safety protocols, but the students have bigger concerns when he tells them of things brewing in blacksites and a woman who floated in green seas with a chip jacked into her brain.

( _Those students are never heard from again, and the practice is soon quashed. Lab safety, after all, is paramount._ )

They hold a funeral for seven scientists, killed due to an accident. Problem with the coolant lines, or so the ADVENT Spokesman says. An unforeseen reaction between two reagents caused an explosion. A tragic accident that shall not be repeated again. 

Those who were in the laboratory that day say they saw a man in a white ADVENT coat and coal-black rimmed glasses shouting in despair at the scientists working on genetic manipulation. When they did not heed his cries, the specter erupted into flame.

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

 

ADVENT has banned celebration of the old world festivals, and the trappings that enslaved people under the banners of false gods. Taipei has changed: gone are the night markets and bubble tea, gone are the street stalls hawking their wares. The sea that kisses the harbor bubbles with unknown things, things that are ash grey and green eyed and poisoned from the Lost City of Hong Kong. The fishermen and the ferries that once sailed the water have been grounded: why waste fuel, when ADVENT does so many things better? Only those determined to go against the Elders’ gifts would keep to their sails and ships.

They say that you have one chance if you are caught practicing the forbidden rites by the ADVENT cameras. There is a woman, moon-pale with coal-black hair and teeth bared sharp like a tiger, who will rip down the lanterns hung up for the new year and cover the ancestral shrines with the black-striped orange of her armor. It must be her armor, patterned like a tiger to camouflage in tall dry grass, which protects the old ways from the conquerors because the trappings of tradition disappear in plain sight.

( _And if you are caught, they say a tiger races alongside the convoy to the education center to tear down the doors. She appears in the armor of the traitors with a drone hovering over her shoulder and sparks spitting through the hole in her temples. The roads to the university are pitted with potholes and sulfurous trenches, which herald the work of the moon-pale woman and her tiger skin. Explosions rock the railways that ADVENT uses to ship cargo, but never the ones that carry people. They say, but cannot prove, that there is no trace of explosives in the wrecks of the infrastructure.)_

These are, of course, just rumors.

 

* * *

 

There’s a flame burning in the heart of the cities, a smoldering discontent that slowly gains a voice.

There is life in the fringes of the city, some place where the spirited away and the lost-but-not-dead can call home.

There are whispers that somewhere, freed Troopers still live. They call themselves Skirmishers, for they throw themselves into quick battles with ADVENT before disappearing back into the wilds. There are rumors that somewhere, humans who wield magic that shoots out from their bodies like lightning still storm through the lost cities. They call themselves Templars, for they are the remnants of history that ADVENT attempted to grind into dust.

There are words on the wind that there are men and women in long coats that wrap around their forms, and sniper rifles ready on their backs. A woman walks in their lead: scarred by war, her skin tanned except in the places where burns have marked her moon-pale, coal-black hair singed short around her chin, orange shirt peeping from her drab long coat. A bright red ribbon, spilled blood red contrasting the gold of a long lost sigil, is woven into the hem of her coat. If the wind blows at her coat, they say you can see a host of colors sewing into the underside: a dark green ribbed wool, a light grey pattern, a blue that XCOM once bore. 

Tears mark her cheeks, but she sings in dead tongues, mourning lost Shanghai and drowned Guangzhou and conquered Taipei and crumbled Moscow and charred Montreal and plasma-scored Kansas.

She bears the ruins of a lost world in her heart, but on her breath and in her arms, she carries forward a new world where humans have retaken the planet and their fates for their own.

Over her shoulder, a drone buzzes like an angry specter ready to harvest those who stand in her way. She wears no crown, but those who have seen her think a crown of white lilies for the dead would suit her well.

She, and the people who have rescued her from the ashes, call themselves Reapers.

Of course, these are just rumors.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine the ADVENT Spokesman going, "THESE ARE JUST RUMORS. EVERYONE STAY CALM AND BELIEVE IN THE ELDERS." while ghosts continue to wreck shit.


End file.
